Trump wants federal workers back at their desks. Why that may be harder than it sounds

It was no surprise when President Donald Trump this week issued a memorandum to the heads of federal departments and agencies, essentially directing them to get their employees back to the office full-time.

It was no surprise when President Donald Trump this week issued a memorandum to the heads of federal departments and agencies, essentially directing them to get their employees back to the office full-time. Among other things, soon after the presidential election, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who at the time were both slated to run Trump’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency, signaled that having a full-time return-to-office mandate was an invitation for many to quit. “Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome,” they wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. In fiscal year 2023, 43% of civilian federal workers engaged in telework on a “routine or situational” basis, according to a December report from the US Office of Personnel Management. But for practical, financial and other reasons, implementing Trump’s directive could be more complicated and time-consuming than assumed. The upshot? “It is reasonable to expect that a significant share of federal workers whose jobs can be done remotely will continue to work at least a few days a week outside of an official federal site [or] office over the next four years,” said government workplace expert Mika Cross, who has implemented several federal government-wide human capital policy and workplace initiatives.